“Rachel,” she replied.
“Rachel,” he repeated. “I have an aunt called Rachel, who put the life of Father Damien into verse. She is a religious fanatic—the result of the way she was brought up, down in Northamptonshire, never seeing a soul. Have you any aunts?”
“I live with them,” said Rachel.
“And I wonder what they’re doing now?” Hewet enquired.
“They are probably buying wool,” Rachel determined. She tried to describe them. “They are small, rather pale women,” she began, “very clean. We live in Richmond. They have an old dog, too, who will only eat the marrow out of bones.… They are always going to church. They tidy their drawers a good deal.” But here she was overcome by the difficulty of describing people.
“It’s impossible to believe that it’s all going on still!” she exclaimed.
The sun was behind them and two long shadows suddenly lay upon the ground in front of them, one waving because it was made by a skirt, and the other stationary, because thrown by a pair of legs in trousers.
“You look very comfortable!” said Helen’s voice above them.
“Hirst,” said Hewet, pointing at the scissorlike shadow; he then rolled round to look up at them.
“There’s room for us all here,” he said.
When Hirst had seated himself comfortably, he said:
“Did you congratulate the young couple?”
It appeared that, coming to the same spot a few minutes after Hewet and Rachel, Helen and Hirst had seen precisely the same thing.
“No, we didn’t congratulate them,” said Hewet. “They seemed very happy.”
“Well,” said Hirst, pursing up his lips, “so long as I needn’t marry either of them—”
“We were very much moved,” said Hewet.
“I thought you would be,” said Hirst. “Which was it, Monk? The thought of the immortal passions, or the thought of newborn males to keep the Roman Catholics out? I assure you,” he said to Helen, “he’s capable of being moved by either.”
Rachel was a good deal stung by his banter, which she felt to be directed equally against them both, but she could think of no repartee.
“Nothing moves Hirst,” Hewet laughed; he did not seem to be stung at all. “Unless it were a transfinite number falling in love with a finite one—I suppose such things do happen, even in mathematics.”
“On the contrary,” said Hirst with a touch of annoyance, “I consider myself a person of very strong passions.” It was clear from the way he spoke that he meant it seriously; he spoke of course for the benefit of the ladies.
“By the way, Hirst,” said Hewet, after a pause, “I have a terrible confession to make. Your book—the poems of Wordsworth, which if you remember I took off your table just as we were starting, and certainly put in my pocket here—”
“Is lost,” Hirst finished for him.
“I consider that there is still a chance,” Hewet urged, slapping himself to right and left, “that I never did take it after all.”
“No,” said Hirst. “It is here.” He pointed to his breast.
“Thank God,” Hewet exclaimed. “I need no longer feel as though I’d murdered a child!”
“I should think you were always losing things,” Helen remarked, looking at him meditatively.
“I don’t lose things,” said Hewet. “I mislay them. That was the reason why Hirst refused to share a cabin with me on the voyage out.”
“You came out together?” Helen enquired.
“I propose that each member of this party now gives a short biographical sketch of himself or herself,” said Hirst, sitting upright. “Miss Vinrace, you come first; begin.”
Rachel stated that she was twenty-four years of age, the daughter of a ship-owner, that she had never been properly educated; played the piano, had no brothers or sisters, and lived at Richmond with aunts, her mother being dead.
“Next,” said Hirst, having taken in these facts; he pointed at Hewet. “I am the son of an English gentleman. I am twenty-seven,” Hewet began. “My father was a fox-hunting squire. He died when I was ten in the hunting field. I can remember his body coming home, on a shutter I suppose, just as I was going down to tea, and noticing that there was jam for tea, and wondering whether I should be allowed—”
“Yes; but keep to the facts,” Hirst put in.
“I was educated at Winchester and Cambridge, which I had to leave after a time. I have done a good many things since—”
“Profession?”
“None—at least—”
“Tastes?”
“Literary. I’m writing a novel.”
“Brothers and sisters?”
“Three sisters, no brother, and a mother.”
“Is that all we’re to hear about you?” said Helen. She stated that she was very old—forty last October, and her father had been a solicitor in the city who had gone bankrupt, for which reason she had never had much education—they lived in one place after another—but an elder brother used to lend her books.
“If I were to tell you everything—” she stopped and smiled. “It would take too long,” she concluded. “I married when I was thirty, and I have two children. My husband is a scholar. And now—it’s your turn,” she nodded at Hirst.
“You’ve left out a great deal,” he reproved her. “My name is St. John Alaric Hirst,” he began in a jaunty tone of voice. “I’m twenty-four years old. I’m the son of the Reverend Sidney Hirst, vicar of Great Wappyng in Norfolk. Oh, I got scholarships everywhere—Westminster—King’s. I’m now a fellow of King’s. Don’t it sound dreary? Parents both alive (alas). Two brothers and one sister. I’m a very distinguished young man,” he added.
“One of the three, or is it five, most distinguished men in England,” Hewet remarked.
“Quite correct,” said Hirst.
“That’s all very interesting,” said Helen after a pause. “But of course we’ve left out the only questions that matter. For instance, are we Christians?”
“I am not,” “I am not,” both the young men replied.
“I am,” Rachel stated.
“You believe in a personal God?” Hirst demanded, turning round and fixing her with his eyeglasses.
“I believe—I believe,” Rachel stammered, “I believe there are things we don’t know about, and the world might change in a minute and anything appear.”
At this Helen laughed outright. “Nonsense,” she said. “You’re not a Christian. You’ve never thought what you are.—And there are lots of other questions,” she continued, “though perhaps we can’t ask them yet.” Although they had talked so freely they were all uncomfortably conscious that they really knew nothing about each other.
“The important questions,” Hewet pondered, “the really interesting ones. I doubt that one ever does ask them.”
Rachel, who was slow to accept the fact that only a very few things can be said even by people who know each other well, insisted on knowing what he meant.
“Whether we’ve ever been in love?” she enquired. “Is that the kind of question you mean?”
Again